China's first AI hyper-realistic theatrical film "Sanxingdui: Future Past" hits theaters, earning 301,500 yuan on its opening day

Smart Things reported on October 24 that yesterday, China's first AI hyper-realistic film, "Sanxingdui: Future Past," officially opened in theaters. According to data from the Maoyan Professional Edition app, on its opening day the film earned 301,500 yuan at the box office, with cumulative total box office of 401,000 yuan. According to data from the Lighthouse Professional Edition app, its projected total box office is 2.078 million yuan.

By comparison, the purely hand-crafted dark-horse animated film "Niu Lai," released on August 5, 2026, earned 34.2 million yuan on its opening day and ultimately reached a cumulative total box office of 64.265 million yuan—a starkly different market performance. However, the two films were released under different conditions: "Niu Lai" opened during the summer season, when the overall market base was stronger.

"Sanxingdui: Future Past" is China's first AI hyper-realistic theatrical film to obtain a public screening license from the China Film Administration. The entire film runs 100 minutes, and all characters are original digital figures, with no digital replicas of real actors.

The film's chief technical support was provided by Shengshu Technology's Vidu, while creative judgments were carried out by the AIGMS team of Bona Film Group in accordance with film-industry workflows.

The film's story is built around the carved symbols on Sanxingdui bronze artifacts: a super AI sweeps across the world, triggering a global catastrophe. An archaeologist discovers that the patterns on the Sanxingdui bronzes are in fact a binary code—and this is precisely the "key" to solving the future crisis.

In fact, "Sanxingdui: Future Past" is not the first AI film to reach theaters. The AIGC animated film "Reunion Order" was released on February 28, 2026; centered on the giant pandas "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuan Yuan" gifted to Taiwan, it tells a story of family reunion across the Taiwan Strait. According to data from the Maoyan Professional Edition app, the film ultimately closed with 62,000 yuan on its opening day and a cumulative box office of 15.006 million yuan.

1. Visual details are clear, but character dialogue still feels stiffly read

Due to copyright issues with the film, no original clips from the movie have yet appeared online. From the two trailers previously released, we can still get a sense of the film's production quality.

Visually, the film achieves a high degree of fidelity to iconic Sanxingdui artifacts such as the bronze sacred tree, the bronze standing figure, and the bronze mask with protruding eyes. At the same time, relying on archaeological research materials, it restores the original metallic color of the bronzes.

In the handling of details in large scenes, the armies, camels, and flagpoles in the backgrounds of ancient scenes are individually distinct, without any blurring into a single mass; modern scenes use blue as the main color tone, conveying a cyberpunk sense of technology, and the corridors, bridges, screens, and character details in the background are clear.

The character designs remain consistent throughout the film, and the voices and movements are relatively natural. However, when characters deliver lines, there is still a somewhat stiff, read-aloud feel, and the emotion is not especially rich.

On the Maoyan app, viewers who have already seen the film have generally left positive reviews. Overall, audiences feel the film exceeded expectations, with strong image quality, narrative logic, and a sense of realism—as if it had been shot with real actors—though the voice acting still has an AI feel.

2. Over 1.2 million base images produced in two years, costs cut by 90%

According to Shengshu Technology, the film relied on Bona AIGMS's self-developed Boka Film Cloud Studio and the Vidu video model for collaborative production, integrating the entire process from storyboard design and image rendering to video generation, and establishing the underlying architecture for industrialized AI film production.

This industrialized achievement was not accomplished overnight. The team went through two years of technical exploration, cumulatively producing more than 1.2 million base images and completing hundreds of version iterations for the entire film.

Producer Qu Ji Xiaojiang said in an interview with Tianjin Daily that because the models were still being upgraded after the film's production was completed, the team had to repeatedly redo some content to avoid making the images look "outdated," and even after obtaining the dragon mark, they used newer models to further improve image quality.

Unlike the public's stereotype of AI creation as a "small workshop" endeavor, according to a Global Times report, the film team modeled itself on a traditional live-action crew and set up 17 professional roles, including screenwriter, director, art, cinematography, sound effects, and editing, continuously reviewing, selecting, and polishing images in a virtual production environment.

The project's core team numbers nearly 100 people, with backgrounds spanning a wide range—members come from gaming, television stations, engineering technology, and other industries. Many had no prior film production experience and needed training to adapt to film-industry standards.

By comparison, a traditional live-action science-fiction film of equivalent scale typically costs at least 100 million yuan, meaning this film's production cost was reduced by nearly 90%.

On August 31, 2026, China's first AI long-form drama to air on satellite television, "Later Journey to the West," launched on Mango TV and aired in Hunan TV's evening prime time slot. In less than an hour after launch, its views on Mango TV surged to 2.064 million. (Just now, China's first satellite-broadcast AI long-form drama premiered! "Monkey Coming" ignites AI short-drama concept stocks)

At its 2026 autumn showcase, iQIYI announced an "All in AI" strategy to empower feature-length film and television production, launching the "Prairie Fire Plan." For the full year 2026, it plans to release more than 40 AIGC films, and among projects subsequently greenlit for production, AIGC films will account for 50%.

Looking overseas, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed at an investor meeting in July this year that nearly 300 titles on its platform currently incorporate generative AI across the entire production chain, from creative planning to post-production.